Last month, Myspace confirmed it had accidentally deleted 12 years worth of users’ music, along with photos, videos, and other audio files. Now, it seems the Internet Archive may be able to help some people recover what they’ve lost. The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of books, movies, software, music, and more. On Wednesday, The Internet Archive’s Jason Scott announced the Myspace Music Dragon Hoard. According to Scott, the collection contains 450,000 songs from 2008-2010 on Myspace, “gathered before they were all ‘deleted’ by mistake.” Myspace reported it had lost data uploaded between 2003 and 2015, but the Myspace Music Dragon Hoard doesn’t expand to all of those years. Still, for those who used Myspace as a window into early music by their favorite artists, it’s good news. ANNOUNCING THE MYSPACE MUSIC DRAGON HOARD, a 450,000 song collection of mp3s from 2008-2010 on MySpace, gathered before they were all "deleted" by mistake. https://t.co/oIunuHF7wc includes a link to...

Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™. Since Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook , knowing how to code has been one of the most in-demand skills of the century. Millennials were first exposed to the world of programming via Myspace, where users could use HTML & CSS to customize their profiles to their liking. During the focus on code, there have been increasingly more companies focused on making it so anyone who wants to create an app or a website can do it without having to have studied computer science. Since the early days of the dot-com era, companies have been developing tools to make website creation accessible to those without a background in computer science. WordPress is one of the first to do this at scale—and one of the most recognizable. WordPress was founded in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg, focusing on making blogging more accessible for people who did not know how to write HTML/CSS & Javascript. As of 2024, 44% of all websites are...

It’s hard to overstate how Sean Kingston had girlies of the early 2000s in a chokehold. The man born Kisean Paul Anderson came from a musical family: his grandfather was famed reggae producer Jack Ruby, who was best known for his work with The Toasters. But Kingston, himself, was discovered on MySpace, according to Digital Spy, and seemed to be everywhere all at once. With hit songs like “Beautiful Girls” and “Take You There” — not to mention a guest appearance on Natasha Beddington’s “Love Like This” — Kingston’s pop-flavored brand of reggae was inescapable. Unfortunately, according to Celebrity Net Worth, Sean Kingston is only worth $500,000 today. This, of course, is despite the fact that his songs were all over the charts at one point in the early 21st century. Kingston’s financial difficulties didn’t come from a shady record deal or from a shady financial adviser. Rather, it came because he over-spent on things he didn’t need — and, in particular, on custom jewelry. Let’s take...

In today’s world, it’s no secret that social media is only a small reflection of what our reality truly looks like. From MySpace days to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more, most modern social media platforms have been treated as highlight reels of our lives. But is this a realistic portrayal of the human experience? Artist and tech startup founder Ziarekenya Smith would say, not at all, considering most platforms today do not allow space for people to be fully transparent about both the good and bad events that happen in their lives. This is why he set out to change this with his platform Inpathy. Inpathy is described as a “first-of-its-kind online space designed to deliver the human experience to millions of people worldwide by encouraging transparency, normalizing moods and showing people, it’s okay to express yourself.” Per Smith, the goal of the platform is to “recreate the human experience” to foster a more balanced environment for interactions between people online. Prior...

Today, millions of people are unemployed, suffer from self-doubt, and have built walls of “what-ifs” around them. The underrepresented community has been hit especially hard by the Coronavirus lockdown, which is why there’s no better time to start learning new skills and improving your career prospects. In 2016, Ruben Harris and Timur and Artur Meyster set out with a mission to demonstrate the possibility of breaking into tech, regardless of background. The trio wanted to break existing stereotypes around hiring individuals from non-traditional backgrounds through education, mentorship, and other resources. They created the Breaking Into Startups Podcast to feature inspiring stories of those who turned their perceived disadvantages into advantages, and their limitations to strength. The podcast today has over one million downloads and has helped thousands of people from non-traditional backgrounds embark on various opportunities and paths in tech and land jobs at some of the best...

Zachary Hinton — a product designer at Hulu — will be one of the fantastic speakers at AfroTech 2019 .  We had a great chat with him about his work, ambitions, and the future of product design. What is a Product Designer? Hinton explains that at their core, product designers are problem-solvers. He says product designers use their design tools coupled with user research to determine customer needs and build products that are both functional and intuitive. Inclusive Product Design “Inclusive design should be at the core of every design process,” Hinton said. “It’s the process of learning who the users are, how they are using the product now, and how they will use it in the future.” Hinton says during the design cycle, the team decides if a product needs to adapt to each user or provide a universal experience. He also points out that while Hulu’s platform is designed to be universally appealing, features like the Black Stories Hub offer a more curated cultural experience. They also...